08 November 2017

Legal or not, these tax havens are for cheats

The more money people have, the more tightly they hang on to it. It is also true that the more money people have, the more governments eye them as potential sources of revenue. These two factors lie behind the periodic outbreak of public indignation at the growth of tax havens round the world – places where the rich, both individual and corporate, can squirrel their wealth away from the attentions of tax collectors. A new bout of revelations and recriminations has been triggered by the leaking of a huge cache of confidential data from Appleby, a law firm based in Bermuda, which lays bare the financial dealings of such wealthy clients as Apple, Queen Elizabeth II and Lewis Hamilton.